November 10, 2009
Brazil's biodiesel production faces bottlenecks
The Brazilian government said that the tight supply of raw materials, principally soyoil, is the main bottleneck for the country's biodiesel production, local news service Estado reported on Monday (November 9).
Although Brazilian agricultural research centre Embrapa is studying the subject, the production of raw materials for biodiesel still isn't sufficient, Estado reported Rodrigo Augusto Rodrigues, the coordinator of an inter-ministerial executive committee on diesel, as saying.
"The major bottleneck is agriculture," he said at a meeting on biodiesel in Brasilia.
The current mix of biodiesel in commercially available diesel fuel, called B4, is 4 percent. The mix will shift to 5 percent, called B5, in January 2010.
National Petroleum Agency's, or ANP, said that the share of soyoil used in biodiesel production was 83.3 percent in September, compared with 78.7 percent in August, Estado reported.
